I just realised most “popular social media” (like twitter for example) acts like a panopticon.
You don’t know whether someone is looking through your likes and judging you. You don’t know whether someone is looking through the profiles you follow and judging you.
There is no way to hide even likes on twitter, at all.
Everyone is scared of what other people think, so they’re forced to cultivate a personal brand, a filtered and “perfected” version of themselves whose only purpose is to please others, while the person in question can’t like and follow stuff that they might like out of fear of being judged.
This is literally a panopticon. It doesn’t matter if someone is judging you, the fear and possibility that someone could be without your knowledge is enough to get you to act a certain way.
This is why I appreciate Cohost’s design philosophy (to an extent) and also why I like the fact that Tumblr has the option to hide absolutely everything from your blog that you don’t want others to see.
This allows you to turn off the panopticon and just enjoy yourself.